The inventive concept relates to semiconductor memory devices, and more particularly, to storage devices including nonvolatile memory device(s), as well as write methods operative within storage devices including nonvolatile memory device(s).
Semiconductor memory devices may be classified as volatile or nonvolatile according to their operative nature. Volatile memory devices operate at relatively high speed, but stored data is lost in the absence of applied power. In contrast, nonvolatile memory devices are able to retain stored data in the absence of applied power.
Nonvolatile memory devices may include the mask read-only memory (MROM), programmable ROM (PROM), erasable programmable ROM (EPROM), electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), and the like. Flash memory is one type of EEPROM having significant commercial importance. For example, flash memory is widely used to store voice and image data in information appliances such as the computer, cellular phone, PDA, digital camera, camcorder, voice recorder, MP3 player, handheld PC, game machine, facsimile, scanner, printer, and the like.
In recent years, many semiconductor memory devices have been designed and fabricated to include stacked or three dimensional memory cell arrays. Three dimensional memory cell arrays provide improved increased data storage density, or stored data per unit area of memory cell array.